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What are the Campaigns?

A “Campaign” is like a traditional MMO “realm” or “server”, with a few key differences:

A Campaign is made up of multiple floating islands connected by runegates. Each island is up to 5,120m by 5,120m in size.

Each of these floating islands will has a unique map. That’s right – the fields, mountains, canyons, forests, rivers, rivers, and the ruins of fallen cities and castles, unique to every island in every Campaign.

Characters are NOT locked permanently to a Campaign, because…

Campaigns don’t last forever! Like any good strategy game, the Campaign has a distinct beginning and end.

Eternal Heroes, Dying Worlds

The Crowfall Universe is persistent in that both the Crows (player characters) and the Eternal Kingdoms (the player-created and player-managed worlds) last forever. Campaigns are designed to be completely dynamic; players can mine ore, clear forests, and scavenge the world for arcane relics and ancient treasure.

The fiction is that you, the “crow”, are an immortal champion of the Gods. You are being sent to the “Dying Worlds”, the Campaigns, to witness the destruction of that world and to fight other divine champions like yourself for experience, glory, and to scavenge rare and wondrous artifacts before that world is consumed.

What is consuming the Dying Worlds?

They call it “the Hunger”. It’s a dark and malevolent force that twists and corrupts all of the creatures of the world and drains the warmth from the land. Once the Hunger takes hold of a world, nothing – not even the Gods – can stop it from consuming everything it touches until that world, and everything on it, is no more.

Why are you destroying your Campaign Worlds?

Most MMOs provide PvP “battlegrounds” only as an end-game mechanic. These are usually set up as a tug-of-war, in which capture points are traded back and forth between the teams and no one ever wins or loses.

If you can’t win or lose, what’s the point of fighting?

Crowfall creates each Campaign as a multi-month event, with a fresh series of islands shrouded in Fog of War and a decisive conclusion with one team victorious over all others.

If the worlds go away, does the game still feel like an MMO?

Yes, because Player Characters are never destroyed. Once you complete one Campaign, you can move your character to the next one – or build your own Eternal Kingdom, which is a player-created and player managed server that never goes away (as the name implies!)

When a Campaign ends, you take your character, your equipment, and the spoils of war from that Campaign, and move on to the next. This gives the game a feeling of permanence while still allowing late-arriving players a chance to be competitive. Additionally, we have “home worlds” (Eternal Kingdoms) that are player-run and not time-limited. These are like traditional MMO servers. The idea is that players can participate in a series of Campaigns over the life of the character, and use these kingdoms as a staging area between Campaigns.

How big do you expect each Campaign to be? How long will they last?

These Campaigns are fully populated – our goal is 2000 concurrent players (which supports a total player population of about 10,000) – and should span at least a handful of islands, each sized up to 5,120m by 5,120m.

As for time scale, we expect Campaigns to last anywhere from one to three months. Technically they can be shorter or longer, so we’ll put up a handful of options, and see which are most popular. Some Campaigns will be time-limited, and others will end based on a triggered event (i.e one faction or guild takes over the entire map).

How dynamic are the Campaign Worlds?

Completely dynamic. Most MMOs are static, meaning that players really aren’t given the ability to make changes to the world. They are designed this way on purpose because they want the game experience to be homogenous for all new players.

Campaigns are not like that. Our Campaign maps are unique and constantly changing. Campaign Worlds will be continually created and destroyed, which means the Universe is always in flux. As a result, the game will feel a lot more fresh and exciting. We can also allow the players to fundamentally change the world without fear of long-term problems. So, hey, go ahead and wreck the place!

Do I get anything for participating in Campaigns?

Yes. In addition to the glory of victory, Campaigns are the primary method of collecting materials and rare resources for use in the Eternal Kingdoms. They are also the source of Artifacts and Relics.

The best items in the game, though, will be goods crafted by your fellow players. And the materials used in these goods will come directly from the spoils of the Campaign Worlds.

How does the passage of time affect the game?

Crowfall is unique in that the passage of time will change the game dramatically.

Each Campaign is broken into seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... at the end of the last season, the Campaign will end, a victor is declared, the Crows leave the world and that Campaign goes offline forever.

Within these seasons there is a day/night cycle, and every “midnight” in game the Hunger will consume a bit more of the world. Monsters will become twisted and corrupted, food resources will become more scarce, and the world will become riddled with Hunger – which the players will have to destroy if they want to continue to harvest resources to survive.

When we say “the world changes”, we mean it. If you haven’t logged into a Campaign in a while, you may return to find your newly-built castle has been reduced to snow-covered ruins. Unlike other MMOs, the game is never the same from one day to the next.

What does a typical Campaign look like?

Here's an example:

Phase 1 is Spring. The Campaign map is hidden by the fog of war. You are dropped into an unknown, deadly environment. This world is filled with the ruins of ancient castles, abandoned mines and haunted villages – which you have to explore to scavenge for weapons, tools, and the resources to start building fortifications.

Phase 2 is Summer. The Hunger starts to infect the creatures. Resources become scarce. Your guild claims an abandoned quarry and must fight to keep it. You use the stone to build an ancient keep, then use it as a staging area to attack your neighbors.

Phase 3 is Fall. The creatures become more deadly as the Hunger takes hold. Resources are heavily contested and transporting them is fraught with peril. Your guild frantically builds a wall around your city, as the nature of conflict shifts from smaller skirmishes to siege warfare.

Phase 4 is Winter. The environment is brutal. Warmth is hard to come by. Your kingdom grows in strength; your neighbors falter and you demand that they swear fealty or face complete loss of the Campaign. Instead, a handful of smaller kingdoms choose to band together against you.

At the end of Winter comes Victory or Defeat. The World is destroyed in a cataclysmic event as the Campaign comes to an end. Your Kingdom emerges victorious, and you return to the Eternal Kingdoms to enjoy the spoils of war. Your adversaries head home, too – to lick their wounds.

What kind of rules will change from one Campaign to the next?

The first major different from one Campaign to the next is: how are the teams divided?

Faction worlds allow players to choose one of three major God factions (Order, Balance, Chaos), and provide a series of “fallen strongholds” (outposts, forts and keeps) for players to claim and rebuild using materials fetched by quarries, mines and mills.

Guild worlds offer more open-world gameplay. Players still collect building materials from quarries, mines and mills – but they can choose where to build these strongholds/capture locations.

Since I can bring a character in to a Campaign, can I bring items?

Each Campaign will have separate rules regarding importing items. Everyone coming into the Campaign will be subject to those same rules. Our goal is for each Campaign to be a unique, multi-month strategy game and to that end, we want to make sure everyone is starting on roughly equal footing to make the game fun.

Some Campaigns will limit players to very few imported items, or none. Others will be more open, allowing players to bring in weapons, tools, or even resources for crafting.

What do I get for participating in a Campaign?

Campaigns also allow for a set number of exported items. These can be stacks of gold or resources, items, or even arcane relics. Once an item has been exported it can be used in an Eternal Kingdom or imported into another Campaign (assuming the rules of that Campaign allow it).

Winning a Campaign will result in a higher number of potential exports. As they say: to the victor goes the spoils.

Why would I choose to play in the different rulesets of Campaigns?

The various rulesets were designed to balance risk vs. reward. The more difficult the ruleset, the higher the potential reward. Obviously, we’re hoping that you might step out of your comfort zone and try the more difficult worlds... but ultimately, that is a choice for each player to make separately.

If I am unwilling to play on the more dangerous worlds, does that mean I won't have access to certain resources?

Braving the higher risk worlds will give you direct access to those resources. If you don’t want to subject yourself to those PvP rulesets, you can trade with other players.

Players will be able trade the rewards they bring back from the Campaigns to others, further driving both social interaction and the world-to-world economy. Crafters will need the best resources to make top-quality goods, but they’ll have a tough time surviving the Campaign Worlds to get them. Similarly, combat players will need the best equipment to take on the Campaigns, but they can’t craft it all on their own. This creates an economic cycle wherein crafters and combatants are continually supplying each other.

What's to prevent people from non-stop Campaign hopping?

Campaigns are not intended to be transitory. Our design goal is for players to pick a few Campaigns at any one time and stick with them until the end.

Campaign Worlds will come with a reservation system, and each account will have a set number of Campaigns that it may subscribe to. We may introduce a way to unlock an already-used slot for a price.

How many Campaigns will be running at once?

As many as we need to support our player base!

The universe map should show a number of Campaigns in various stages of completion at any given time. There should always be new Campaigns starting, and old Campaigns coming to an end.

We also host Campaigns locally in various territories, including throughout Europe with our partner, Travian Games.

Are Campaigns region locked between the U.S. and EU?

We are trying to allow as much cross-over play as possible, especially between the U.S. and Western Europe. Some territories (like China, for instance) will exist in a separate universe, for technical and/or legal reasons.

How open are you to trying new ideas within Campaigns?

Our intention is to make this a community-driven process. We’ll take the best ideas we find, wherever they come from, and give them a shot.

If an idea gains enough traction and fits within the architecture, we’ll try it.

You want to try a world without magic? Cool.
You want to try a world where we introduce cannons as a siege weapon? Sounds interesting.
You want to try a world where each character only has one life – meaning that if you die once, you are permanently banned from the World? Sure, let’s do it.

That’s the cool thing about this development approach: we’re turning our community into a massive, game-designing hivemind.

How are rewards determined at the conclusion of a Campaign?

Players can place items, resources and materials into export – basically, this is a way of “uploading” items to your Spirit Bank inside a Campaign. Each world has a limit on imports and exports, and each item or stack of items counts as one. Once you have exported the item, it will appear in your Spirit Bank and may be transferred into your EK or even another Campaign.

Import/export amounts can be adjusted on the fly as the Campaign is going. We may also trigger additional imports and exports based on game actions, as well, such as successfully capturing a fort or defending a castle in a siege.

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